music, therapy, and me

I am going into work on a regular Friday!! I am going to work a regular Friday!! Today is a regular Friday! Why all this enthusiasm for going to work?? Why am I emphasizing a regular Friday? Well, readers, for the past two weeks, our Fridays have been inclement weather days which means that I have had to do extra music therapy groups for our residents. They still have to come to school on snow days because we only have the school staff available to coordinate their care on those days. So, I trudge through the ice and snow (when I can) to go down and do music therapy on those days - sessions that are completely different from our regular therapy - these sessions are more geared towards energy expression and fun than our usual sessions because, hello, SNOW DAY! Most of my students live at the facility full time. It is not something that they choose - they have to be there. Since they don't get much choice in whether they come to school when the rest of the world gets to stay ...

I had a revelation and realization yesterday as I was in a supervision session with one of my interns. When it occurred to me, I felt amazed that everything was finally all together and a bit ashamed that I hadn't figured this out before. This revelation may not be as wonderful for others, but I realized that my procedure sessions had to reflect the music therapy purposes established at the top of every therapeutic music experience that I write. If I write down that the purpose of the TME is to address fine motor skills, then I had better have a part of my implementation procedure where I assess and reinforce or redirect fine motor skills. Duh, right? I'm not sure I've ever thought of this before. There has to be a link between what we are doing in sessions and what we say we are doing in sessions. Now, my procedures change based on the clinical goals of my clients, so I may not have to assess fine motor skills with a particular client. If I don't write it down,...

Every year at this time, my stress level climbs to extreme levels. It is entirely due to my involvement in the Online Conference for Music Therapy, and it is a labor of love that I know will take over my life for some time and then be done for another year. Let me make this clear - IT IS MY CHOICE TO DO THIS JOB AND TAKE ON THIS STRESS! It is also the time of year when everything has to happen all at once, so I end up getting more stress because I have to fit all this in with everything else that is going on. Again, this is MY CHOICE and MY CHOICE only. Due to this scheduled stress ramp-up every single year, I know that it is time for a bit of self-care and over consideration for myself. I can't PROVE a correlation between my level of health and my overly stressed week, but it happens that I get sick every time this conference comes around - bronchitis, allergy stuff, fevers, etc. It seems pretty close to being a correlation, but I cannot prove it. This year, when my throat...

Twenty-eight free resources are what David Row offers to us as music therapists. His store includes behavior point sheets, lots of visuals about music education standards, and folk song units for free and many other resources for sale. I love it when I find resources that get my creative processes stirred up. I enjoy finding things that make me think a bit deeper about my music therapy sessions and how I can get my students involved in learning. I downloaded the July musician bulletin board set - 30 pages, and all for free! I'm considering the full year packet - $30.00 worth, but lots of good facts and pictures that could make my musician of the month series really easy to keep going! David Row at Make Moments Matter incorporates all sorts of things into his shop. There are forms to organize your music use (this is how he got to me - ORGANIZATION!), folk song outlines, lots of things about rules, things to put up on bulletin boards, and labels and the like.  I'm going ...

I am an okay time manager. On weeks like this, when I have a major event coming up, I tend to get things done, but the to-do list gets longer and longer and everything has an air of immediacy about it. I have to spend more time and effort on my time management skills and use my lists more diligently. The problem with weeks like this is that everything has a specific time frame for completion and nothing can really get going until that time frame. This is the type of week where I can't really get things done ahead of time, I can just wait until it is time to release information and finish tasks. Anyway, I am an okay time manager. I am also a procrastinator/perfectionist who always feels that there is plenty of time to get things done until deadlines come up and then I wish I had started things earlier... I am trying to evolve into someone who has less deadline stress and more space to get tasks finished. I have already finished and scheduled one of the tasks due to be rel...

Okay, okay. I know that I haven't really been as dedicated to this type of blogging situation as I would have liked recently, but there have been lots of things going on. No more excuses. The only thing that will interfere with all of my blogging will be the continued snow days (that was Friday's excuse) and my dependence on medication (Saturday's excuse!). My article for this time around is entitled, Music Therapy in the Special Education Setting written by John Pelliteri in 2000 and published in the Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation , edition 11(3&4), pages 379-391. There you go. I found it on Google Scholar in pdf format. This is less of a research paper as it is a persuasive piece written for a group of people who are not music therapists but who may act as referral points. I like the opportunity to read pieces that demonstrate music therapy to those who have limited information about our profession. It is always interesting to see how fol...

One of my favorite movies in the world is called Bowfinger . It is a silly movie, but it is something that I absolutely adore. It stars Steve Martin (who also wrote it) and Eddie Murphy (in a dual role) along with Christine Baranski, Heather Graham, and Terence Stamp. It's a funny movie about the movie industry, and I have most of it memorized. One of Eddie Murphy's characters is a famous movie actor who gets involved with everyone else in a con situation, and his character is on the edge to begin with. As part of the story, he is involved in a form of counseling and has a mantra - Keep it Together. During the movie, he repeats this mantra when things get a bit too much for him to handle. You can tell how much he is upset by the pitch and the tempo of his repetitive chant - keep it together, keep it together, KIT, keep it together. Last week's sessions were a time when I used this mantra. Things were spiraling, and I was coming down with my Jan/Feb ick, and it was all...